International Data Corp. (IDC) said worldwide tablet shipments climbed from 144,2m to 217.1m last year.
IDC said Apple's iPad is increasing sales but slower than the overall market and that growth rates are tapering off in the larger markets like the United States.
"It's becoming increasingly clear that markets such as the US are reaching high levels of consumer saturation and while emerging markets continue to show strong growth this will not be enough to sustain the dramatic worldwide growth rates of years past," said IDC analyst Tom Mainelli.
"We expect commercial purchases of tablets to continue to accelerate in mature markets, but softness in the consumer segment, brought about by high penetration rates and increased competition for the consumer dollar, point to a more challenging environment for tablets in 2014 and beyond," Mainelli said
IDC said sales in the fourth quarter grew 62.4% to 76.9m, amid a holiday season featuring several new product launches. For the quarter, sales were up 28.4% when compared with the same period in 2012.
IDC said that in the quarter, Apple sold 26m iPads, for a 33.8% share of the market. This was down from 38.2% share Apple had in 2012.
"While the quarter represented (Apple's) most successful on record, its year-on-year growth of 13.5% was well below the industry average," IDC said.
"The numbers bring into focus the challenges the company faces as it attempts to grow its tablet business in markets outside of its traditional mature-market strongholds and in the face of continued success from competitors, both large and small," the company said.
Samsung was the number two vendor, selling 14.5m tablets for an 18.8% market share, according to the survey.
IDC said Amazon, which does not publicly reveal sales of its Kindle devices, sold 5.8m tablets in the fourth quarter, securing the number three spot globally with a 7.6% market share.
The survey showed that Taiwan's Asus was fourth with a market share of 5.1% and China's Lenovo fifth with 4.4%.
Source: AFP via I-Net Bridge
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